Priming and Accessibility

• Fundamental Cognitive Architecture: Accessibility, Salience, and Memory Networks

• Accessibility vs. Salience:

  • Accessibility: The ease with which a concept, node, or attitude can be activated or retrieved from memory.

  • Salience: How prominent, noticeable, or visually standing-out a stimulus or concept is in the immediate environment.

• Cognitive Network Models of Memory:

  • Rooted in cognitive and social psychology theories (e.g., J. Anderson, $1983$ ACT* model; Wyer, $2004$).

  • Memory is represented as an associative network consisting of nodes (concepts, ideas, or theoretical elements) connected by associative pathways.

  • Nodes in a resting state are inactive.

  • Each node possesses a specific activation threshold. When internal thoughts or external stimuli supply sufficient energy to reach this threshold, the node fires or activates.

• Threshold Dynamics and Decay:

  • Frequency of Activation: Repeatedly activating a concept systematically changes and lowers its resting activation threshold, making it chronically easier to retrieve ($Wyer, 2004$).

  • Effortful Processing: Deep, effortful cognitive processing of a concept similarly lowers its resting threshold.

  • Decay / Weakening Over Time: If a concept remains inactive over extended periods, its activation threshold weakens and accessibility degrades. As noted by Grant & Logan ($1993$), "once accessible does not mean always accessible."

• Spreading Activation and Associative Pathways:

  • When a node fires, activation energy travels along associative pathways to connected nodes.

  • The strength of the associative pathway dictates how much energy transfers.

  • A strong pathway between nodes (e.g., from "doctor" to "nurse") transfers significant energy, causing the connected node to reach its threshold or bringing it closer to firing.

  • Spreading activation creates a temporary state of heightened accessibility that decays over time as energy dissipates.

  • Media Spreading Activation Chain Example: $\text{BEACH} \rightarrow \text{OCEAN} \rightarrow \text{SHARK} \rightarrow \text{JAWS}$.

• Temporary vs. Chronic Accessibility:

  • Chronic Accessibility: Long-term, stable ease of retrieval caused by frequent prior activation or extensive cognitive elaboration over time.

  • Temporary Accessibility (Priming): A short-term spike in accessibility triggered by recent exposure to a stimulus (a prime).

Theoretical Domains of Chronic Accessibility

• 1. Construct Accessibility:

  • Availability Heuristic: The cognitive strategy where individuals estimate the frequency, probability, or prevalence of an event based on how easily relevant exemplars are activated from memory.

  • Cultivation Theory: Shrum ($2009$) formulated the Heuristic Processing Model of Cultivation, demonstrating that heavy television viewers rely on the heightened construct accessibility of TV exemplars to make real-world social reality judgments (supported by Bradley, $2007$; Busselle & Shrum, $2003$; Riddle, $2010$).

  • Agenda Setting: Heavy news coverage of a political or social issue increases the construct accessibility of that issue in memory. The ease of retrieval acts as an informational cue that the issue is important ($Scheufele, 2000$; Roskos-Ewoldsen, Bichsel, & Hoffman, 2002).

  • Media Framing: Construct accessibility operates as a mediator of message framing effects (e.g., Schuldt & Roh, $2014$ on how exposure to terms like "global warming" versus "climate change" activates distinct accessible constructs). However, chronic construct accessibility can also act as a moderator; when audience members hold highly accessible pre-existing constructs that contradict a media frame, the message frame's influence is overridden ($Shen, 2004$).

• 2. Attitude Accessibility:

  • Definition: The ease with which an evaluative summary response (positive or negative judgment) toward an object is activated from memory ($Fazio, 1986$).

  • Continuum of Accessibility:

    • Automatically Activated Attitudes: Positioned at one extreme; activated instantly and effortlessly upon encountering the stimulus without conscious intent (e.g., an automatic reaction of revulsion upon seeing a rodent or rat; Roskos-Ewoldsen & Fazio, $1992$).

    • Effortful Attitudes: Positioned at the opposite extreme; stored in memory but requiring conscious, deliberate mental effort to recall (e.g., evaluating a specific course taken years prior in graduate school).

  • Behavioral & Processing Consequences:

    • Accessible attitudes strongly predict actual behavior because they are active in memory at the moment of action (Rhodes & Ewoldsen, 2009, 2013).

    • They direct visual attention toward matching objects in the environment (Roskos-Ewoldsen & Fazio, 1992).

    • They create biased information processing, leading individuals to evaluate counter-attitudinal messages as lower quality or hostile (Rhodes, Roskos-Ewoldsen, Edison, & Bradford, 2008; Holt, Ellithorpe, & Ralston, 2017).

  • Media Effects on Attitude Accessibility:

    • An anti-racism feature film was shown to reduce the accessibility of participants' implicit racist attitudes (Eno & Ewoldsen, 2010).

    • Fear appeal messages increase the accessibility of attitudes toward adaptive behaviors (e.g., performing breast self-exams), directly predicting future behavioral intentions (Roskos-Ewoldsen, Yu, & Rhodes, 2004).

    • Long-term media exposure chronically alters attitude accessibility (second-order cultivation effects; Shrum, $2009$; Arendt, $2010$; Arendt & Brantner, $2015$ using the Affect Misattribution Procedure [AMP; Payne et al., $2005$]).

    • Indirect Spreading Activation in Ecotainment: Entertainment television containing incidental mentions of pro-environmental practices increased attitude accessibility for the depicted behaviors, which spread via associative pathways to non-depicted behaviors (such as recycling), increasing intentions to engage in those non-depicted behaviors (Rhodes, Toole, & Arpan, 2016).

    • Selective Exposure and Sharing: Accessible attitudes dictate media selection. Individuals with accessible negative attitudes toward the European Union (EU) selectively avoided reading EU news stories (Arendt, Steindl, & Kumpel, 2016; $Knobloch-Westerwick, 2015$) and were more likely to share aligned news on social media.

  • Transactive Model of Attitude Accessibility ($Roskos-Ewoldsen, 1997$):

    • Proposes that accessible attitudes function dynamically to protect and maintain themselves.

    • Expecting to need an attitude or engaging in elaboration increases chronic accessibility.

    • Because accessible attitudes orient attention to matching stimuli in the environment, those attitudes are repeatedly reactivated.

    • Smoker Reactance Example: Cigarette smokers exposed to anti-smoking Public Service Announcements (PSAs) engaged in biased cognitive processing moderated by the accessibility of their pro-smoking attitudes. The ads triggered reactance, led smokers to judge the ads as biased, and reinforced their intention to continue smoking ($Rhodes et al., 2008$).

• 3. Norm Accessibility:

  • Definition: Normative beliefs—such as subjective norms regarding whether important social contacts approve or disapprove of a behavior (Fishbein & Ajzen, 2010)—vary in cognitive accessibility.

  • Adolescent Protective Factors: Accessible parental norms act as a protective factor for teenagers facing peer pressure regarding marijuana, alcohol, smoking, or early sexual behavior (Rhodes, Ewoldsen, Shen, Monahan, & Eno, 2014).

  • PSA Resistance: Smokers with accessible pro-smoking norms engaged in reduced central processing and increased peripheral processing when viewing anti-smoking PSAs ($Rhodes et al., 2008$). Teens with accessible pro-smoking peer norms exhibited higher reactance to anti-smoking PSAs and reported greater readiness to smoke $3$ months later (Rhodes, Ralston, & Bigsby, 2016).

  • Types of Norms (Focus Theory of Normative Conduct; Cialdini, Reno, & Kallgren, $1990$):

    • Descriptive Norms: Perceptions regarding how common a specific behavior actually is within a group.

    • Injunctive Norms: Perceptions regarding whether a behavior will meet with social approval or disapproval from key individuals.

  • Norm Interaction Dynamics: When injunctive norms are strong and accessible, descriptive norms add little incremental effect. However, when an individual lacks an accessible injunctive norm, descriptive norms exert the strongest influence on behavior (Toole, Arpan, & Rhodes, 2012; $Rimal, 2008$).

Models of Behavior: Deliberative vs. Spontaneous Processing

• Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and Derivatives:

  • Formulated by Fishbein & Ajzen ($2010$). Assumes that attitudes toward a behavior and subjective norms combine to form behavioral intentions, which directly dictate behavior.

  • Theoretical Criticism: TRA and the Integrative Model exclusively explain deliberative behavior where individuals consciously analyze alternatives ($Fazio, 1990$; Rhodes & Ewoldsen, 2013).

• Fazio's Process Model of Attitude-Behavior Relationship:

  • Explains spontaneous behavior ($Fazio, 1986$).

  • When an object is encountered, accessible attitudes fire automatically, biasing immediate perceptions of the object and defining the situation.

  • Accessible norms define the boundary of acceptable actions within that defined situation.

  • Environmental Definition Example: Encountering a spider in one's basement (defined as benign/manageable, leading to catching and releasing it) versus on a dinner plate at a restaurant (defined as repulsive/aversive, triggering an immediate complaint).

• The MODE Model (Motivation and Opportunities as DEterminants):

  • Integrates TRA and the Process Model ($Fazio, 1990$; Ewoldsen, Rhodes, & Fazio, 2015).

  • High Motivation + Opportunity: Individuals engage in deliberate processing, carefully evaluating available information (TRA applies).

  • Low Motivation OR Low Opportunity: Individuals rely on automatically activated accessible attitudes and norms, leading to spontaneous behavior (Process Model applies).

Characteristics and Mechanisms of Media Priming

• Definition of Media Priming: The phenomenon whereby exposure to media content increases the temporary accessibility of concepts in memory, influencing subsequent thoughts, judgments, feelings, or behaviors (Roskos-Ewoldsen, Klinger, & Roskos-Ewoldsen, 2007; Roskos-Ewoldsen, Roskos-Ewoldsen, & Carpentier, 2009).

• Everyday Media Priming Scenarios:

  • Watching a horror movie $\rightarrow$ hearing a noise downstairs $\rightarrow$ interpreting the noise as an intruder in the house.

  • Watching a romantic comedy $\rightarrow$ relationship thoughts become accessible $\rightarrow$ evaluating personal romantic relationships.

  • Consuming repeated news reports on crime $\rightarrow$ encountering an ambiguous street interaction $\rightarrow$ interpreting the encounter as hostile or threatening.

• Three Fundamental Characteristics of Priming:

  • 1. Recency (Temporal Decay):

    • Priming effects decay over time as node activation returns to its resting threshold.

    • Cognitive Tasks (e.g., lexical decision or attitude priming tasks): Effects decay within approximately $1\,\text{second}$ (Higgins, Bargh, & Lombardi, 1985).

    • Social Judgment & Evaluation Tasks: Effects persist for $15$ to $20\,\text{minutes}$, and up to $1\,\text{hour}$ ($Roskos-Ewoldsen et al., 2007$; $Arendt, 2013\text{b}$; $Riddle, 2010$).

  • 2. Strength / Intensity:

    • Stronger or repeated primes yield larger priming effects.

    • Manipulated via frequency (e.g., a single weapon exposure vs. $5$ rapid exposures) or duration (e.g., $1\,\text{minute}$ vs. $15\,\text{minutes}$) and vividness ($Arendt, 2013\text{a}, 2015$; $Dillman Carpentier et al., 2008$; $Riddle, 2010$).

    • The increase is non-linear ($Arendt, 2015$).

  • 3. Ambiguity:

    • Priming exerts its most pronounced effects in ambiguous situations ($Roskos-Ewoldsen, 1997$; $Arendt, 2017$).

    • Unambiguous events leave little room for interpretation, whereas ambiguous behaviors are shaped by whichever concepts are currently accessible.

    • Interpersonal Bump Example: Being bumped in a crowd can be interpreted as an accident or an intentional insult depending on whether hostile constructs were recently primed.

Media Priming of Aggression and Violence

• Media Violence Priming Effects: Exposure to violent media increases the temporary accessibility of aggressive thoughts and hostility constructs ($Bushman, 1998$; Bushman & Anderson, 2002).

• Cognitive Neo-Associationistic Model ($Berkowitz, 1984, 1990$):

  • Grounded in memory network models.

  • Media violence activates hostility and aggression nodes.

  • Heightened node activity increases the likelihood of interpreting ambiguous provocations as hostile and responding with aggressive behavior.

  • Without additional priming inputs, node activation decays over time back to resting states.

• General Aggression Model (GAM) (C. A. Anderson, Gentile, & Buckley, 2007):

  • Expands the neo-associationistic model into a multi-stage process incorporating affect, arousal, and cognition.

  • Stage 1: Situational Inputs: External media depictions automatically prime aggressive cognitions (hostile memories/thoughts), aggressive affect (anger), and physiological arousal outside conscious control.

  • Stage 2: Primary Appraisal: Automatic, spontaneous interpretation of the situation and attribution of arousal (parallels Fazio's Process Model).

  • Stage 3: Secondary Appraisal: Controlled, effortful deliberative processing where behavioral options are considered. Secondary appraisals can override primary hostile appraisals (e.g., experiencing aggressive thoughts after playing a violent video game when cut off in traffic, but deliberately choosing not to retaliate).

Media Priming in Political Communication

• Mechanism: News coverage alters the evaluative criteria (standards and weights) that citizens use when forming overall political judgments or presidential evaluations (Iyengar & Kinder, 1987; S.-H. Kim, Han, & Scheufele, 2010).

• Krosnick & Kinder ($1990$) Iran-Contra Study:

  • Evaluated U.S. public approval of President Ronald Reagan before and after the November $1986$ confirmation of arms sales to Iran and funding of the Nicaraguan Contras.

  • Pre-Announcement: Domestic policy evaluations were the primary statistical predictor of overall presidential approval.

  • Post-Announcement: Foreign affairs policy (specifically regarding Central America) became the dominant predictor of overall presidential approval.

• Theoretical Frameworks of Political Priming:

  • Agenda Setting Extension & Availability Heuristic: Heavy issue coverage increases issue accessibility, which serves as a heuristic for overall evaluation (Iyengar & Kinder, 1987; Iyengar & Simon, 1993).

  • Knowledge Activation Model (Price & Tewksbury, 1997):

    • Combines network memory activation with applicability (deliberate judgments of information relevance to the current evaluation).

    • Concepts activated by media and deemed applicable directly frame the judgment.

    • Activated concepts deemed non-applicable are excluded from working memory but may still act as implicit temporary primes.

  • Hydraulic Model vs. Information Variety: Early models assumed a hydraulic framework where primed issues displace other criteria. However, Y. M. Kim ($2005$) showed that news exposure can expand the total variety of information used by attentive news consumers.

  • Accessibility vs. Deliberative Processing: Miller & Krosnick ($2000$) questioned accessibility because response times did not directly correlate with criteria weighting. However, subsequent work established that activation of accessible constructs actually motivates deliberative processing ($Rhodes et al., 2008$; $Roskos-Ewoldsen et al., 2002$).

Media Priming of Stereotypes

• Gender Stereotypes: Hansen & Hansen ($1988$) demonstrated that exposure to stereotypic rock music videos caused participants to evaluate women in subsequent unrelated social interactions as significantly less dominant.

• Mental Illness Stereotypes: Holman & McKeever ($2017$) documented the "Andrea Yates effect," showing how news exemplification of postpartum disorders primed broad negative mental illness stereotypes.

• Racial Stereotypes:

  • Credibility & Responsibility: Stereotypic media content lowered participant ratings of Anita Hill's credibility during the Clarence Thomas sexual harassment hearings (Power, Murphy, & Coover, 1996; Brown Givens & Monahan, 2005).

  • Spreading Activation to Policy: Viewing news broadcasts featuring Black criminal suspects increased participant support for the death penalty ($Dixon, 2006$).

  • Framing without Explicit Mention: News framing of immigration (focusing on economic vs. ethical impacts) primed Hispanic racial stereotypes even though Hispanics were never explicitly mentioned in the story (Domke, McCoy, & Torres, 1999; $Domke, 2001$).

  • Intergroup Spillover: Priming the Asian American "model minority" stereotype led to more positive judgments of Asian Americans alongside more negative judgments of African Americans and decreased support for affirmative action (Dalisay & Tan, 2009).

• Priming Chronically Accessible Stereotypes:

  • Chronically accessible racial stereotypes can be primed to achieve higher accessibility levels (Bargh, Bond, Lombardi, & Tota, 1986).

  • Political campaigns utilize media primes to trigger highly accessible racial attitudes. Content analyses of the $2008$ and $2012$ U.S. presidential campaigns showed that political ads manipulated skin complexion tones (e.g., darkening Barack Obama's skin in crime-related ads) to successfully prime racial stereotypes (Messing, Jabon, & Plaut, 2015; Luttig & Callaghan, 2016).

Priming in Virtual Environments and New Media

• Online Advertising Environments: Sidebar and banner ads featuring strong sexual appeals primed viewers' subsequent social evaluations of individual profile pictures on social networking sites (Dillman Carpentier, Parrott, & Northup, 2014; Northup & Dillman Carpentier, 2015).

• Avatar Language Priming: Peña, McGlone, & Sanchez ($2012$) showed that participants assigned sophisticatedly dressed avatars used significantly different language (focusing on education and books) compared to participants assigned glamorously dressed avatars (who discussed sports, entertainment, and clothes).

• The Proteus Effect:

  • Defined by Yee ($2014$): The visual appearance of a user's avatar influences their self-perception, cognition, and behavior.

  • Virtual Museum Study: Peña, Hancock, & Merola ($2009$) assigned participants avatars wearing Ku Klux Klan (KKK) robes, doctor coats, or transparent controls. KKK avatars primed significantly more aggressive thoughts and inhibited positive thoughts compared to doctor or control avatars ($Peña, 2011$).

Media Influence Framework Comparison

• Comparative Matrix of Media Effects:

  • Agenda Setting: Media influence what we think about (issue salience and accessibility).

  • Framing: Media influence how we think about an issue (interpretation, emphasis, and context).

  • Priming: Media influence what comes to mind when making later judgments (evaluative criteria weighting and temporary cognitive accessibility).